Anne sat apparently wrapped in thought.  She nervously clasped and unclasped her small hands.

“Grace,” she said, “don’t you think it was queer the way the juniors seemed to understand our signals.  They knew every one of them.  I believe that they found that list and it is all my fault.  I had no business to lose it.  I felt when I couldn’t find it that it would fall into the wrong hands and cause trouble.  I don’t care for myself but if the girls find it out they will blame you for giving it to me.  You know what Miriam said the other day.  Now she will have a chance to be disagreeable to you about it.”

Anne was almost in tears.

“Anne, dear,” said Grace soothingly, “don’t worry about it.  I am not afraid to tell the girls about that list, and I shall certainly do so.  They will understand that it was an accident, and overlook it.  Besides, we are not sure that the juniors found it.  I will admit that everything points that way.  You know David warned us that they had some mischief on hand.  If they did find it, the only honorable thing to do was to return it.  They are far more at fault than we are, and the girls will agree with me, I know.”

But Anne was not so confident.

“Miriam will try to make trouble about it, I know she will.  And I am to blame for the whole thing,” she said.

Grace was about to reply when Mrs. Harlowe appeared in the door with a tray of tempting food.

Anne rose and began donning her wraps.

“Won’t you stay, Anne, and have supper with my invalid girl?” said Mrs. Harlowe.

“Please do, Anne,” coaxed Grace.  “I hate eating alone, and having you here takes my mind off my pain.”

Anne stayed, and the two girls had a merry time over their meal.  Grace, knowing Anne’s distress over the lost signals, refused to talk of the subject.  Jessica and Nora, David, Hippy and Reddy dropped in, one after the other, to inquire for Grace.

“There is nothing like accidents to bring one’s friends together,” declared Grace, as the young people gathered around her.

“I told you to look out for squalls, Grace,” said David.  “But you didn’t weather the gale very well.”

“Those juniors must have been eavesdropping when you made your signal code.  They understood every play you made.  By George, I wonder if that were the meaning of that pow-wow the other day.  Some one must have put Julia Crosby wise, and that’s why she called a meeting at the Omnibus House.  It’s an out-of-the-way place, and she thought there was no danger of being disturbed.

“Who could have been mean enough to betray us?” cried Nora.  “I am sure none of the team did, unless——­” Nora stopped short.

She had been on the point of using Miriam’s name, but remembered just in time that Miriam’s brother was present.

“If we knew the girl who did it, we’d certainly cut her acquaintance,” said Reddy Brooks.